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(6) The Foreknowledge of God.--God's foreknowledge is differentiated from election
and predestination, inasmuch as election is said to be "according" to foreknowledge, and
predestination is predicated of those who were already foreknown. Foreknowledge does
not mean fatalism, predestinarianism, determinism, or any of the other systems that
would make heaven of brass and man morally irresponsible.
(7) The Living God.--God is living, loving Person, not a blind, omnipotent Force, or
the Absolute of Metaphysics. No title of God, no name whereby He reveals His nature to
us in the Scriptures, sounds such depths of fullness as the last of His titles, "The God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ".
(8) Jesus Christ is Lord.--Reviewing the testimony of the Scripture to the nature of
the Creator, we learn that He is without equal. He stands alone, there is none else, and
His glory He will not share with another. The Lord Jesus Christ is revealed as the
Creator, as God, as the Lord. The moment we see in Him the God-Man all apparent
contradictions vanish, and we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
These related themes must be kept in the background of our thoughts as we proceed
with our study.
Let us now come to the creation of man.
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth"
(Gen. 1: 26).
"Let US . . . . . OUR . . . . . OUR."--It is not extraordinary that Israel should have
been called upon to witness, amid pagan idolatry, to the Unity of God, and yet that their
very Scriptures should continually use for the great name of their God, a plural word:
Elohim? Some impelling reason must account for this strange fact.
Some have suggested that the plural here is simply the Plural of Majesty, much of the
same kind as that adopted by earthly monarchs, but this is not supported by the usage of
Scripture. In Gen. 3: 22 we read:
"Behold the man is become AS ONE OF US."
An earthly king might use a similar expression if he desired to include his
fellow-monarchs, but Jehovah stands alone--there are no fellow-gods.
The use of the plural in Gen. 3: 22 confirms the R.V. translation of Gen. 3: 5: "Ye
shall be as God"--not "as gods", as in the A.V. If the plural ("gods") is the correct
rendering of Gen. 3: 5, why not read "gods" in Gen. 1: 1, 2, 3, 4 and in all the
twenty-seven occurrences of the plural word in Gen. 1:?